Saturday, July 7, 2018

The Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP) has gone overboard in promoting euthanasia. In 2016, CARP hired Wanda Morris, who at that time was the CEO of the euthanasia lobby group Dying With Dignity, as CARP's VP of advocacy.

Palliative care practitioners bravely pioneered a critical role. They believed that, just because a disease was incurable, the patient should not be left to suffer. By palliating, or lessening, symptoms, these doctors and nurses helped patients die gentler, more peaceful deaths.

Those in palliative care spent time, effort and energy communicating with their peers and the public: we are not here to bring about your death but to help you die well. Palliative care proponents stated they would neither hasten nor postpone death.

In the context of history, this position made a lot of sense. But it is still being used today — even though our medical landscape has changed significantly. Thanks to a Supreme Court of Canada ruling in 2015 and subsequent federal legislation, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) is now legal in Canada. While the legalization of assisted dying had overwhelming public support (84 per cent in favour) among both CARP members and the general public, many in palliative care, such as Nancy Macey, executive director of the Delta Hospice Society in B.C., have gone on record as saying it is undermining their ability to provide end-of-life care and want nothing to do with it.

This is causing real harm to patients because these hospitals and hospices are preventing patients from accessing an assisted death on their premises.

Wanda Morris
Dying with Dignity, former CEO

Morris is stating that hospices and medical care givers who refuse to lethally inject patients are causing harm. She is intentionally undermining the Hippocratic tradition by suggesting that not killing is harming patients:

I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course.

Morris then coyly interviews Shanaaz Gokool, who became CEO of the euthanasia lobby group, Dying With Dignity after Morris was hired by CARP, who said:

According to Gokool, a number of publicly funded health-care facilities across the country are refusing to provide assisted dying. Some, like the palliative care unit at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, refuse to allow patients access to medical assistance in dying for religious reasons.

Gokool attacks a palliative care unit that is known for its excellence in care because they refuse to kill their patients. Morris completed her article by stating:

Tragically and ironically, the hospice movement — born out of the need to alleviate patient suffering — is, in some cases, causing suffering in patients who choose an assisted death.

Clearly CARP is more concerned about promoting euthanasia than caring about the needs of people who are approaching death.

CARP has lost their way. Canadians need to abandon their memberships in CARP.

Most members of CARP likely do not realize that their membership fees are being used to promote euthanasia. I refuse to become a member of CARP for this reason, and whenever the opportunity arises I also advise others not to join CARP because of its aggressively one-sided approach to this issue. Zoomer Magazine, CARP's voice, is in particular a vehicle for bad journalism in support of a bad cause.

I am choosing to make an anonymous comment because I don't want to be blacklisted or denied access to CARP, as there might be some trolls on this page. CARP describes itself as a non-partisan organization that is there to advocate for the needs/interests of retired persons. Unfortunately, most of its membership seems to be of the Liberal/Socialist/Left-wing persuasion....That is why the executive and organization is promoting policies and practices of the Left... I am choosing to battle them in a different way. As of today, I am getting a membership in the organization and will try to influence a change in policies and attitudes from the inside. I will advocate for a better respect for life and encouraging HOPE, which is sadly lacking in our whole country. I have learned that change is better affected from inside than it is from the outside. In fact, I would encourage you to NOT cancel your membership and to GET a membership if you don't have one yet... However, if you feel that there are enough people who don't believe in their policies (I don't think that is the case, otherwise they would not profess the things they profess) who, by cancelling their memberships, would create a major shock to their organization...then so be it, cancel BUT, make sure you let them know why you are cancelling, otherwise you are doing it for nothing....

I have been a volunteer at Hospice, taken courses on hospice care and was present for many a death in such caring hands. I have never ever experienced a death in Hospice that was not peaceful, and a beautiful way to die. Surrounded by people who care, and who know that death is simply a part of living. From a point of view of Hospice, as I have experienced it is no one dies, their consciousness simply leaves their body behind. A gentle and beautiful process. I can easily understand how people who support Euthanasia would not want to live out their life to the end. This does not give anyone with that attitude the right to force Euthanasia on people who choose to die as they have lived. I was given the opportunity to join CARP, and found it was not the kind of organization that supports elders in growth and well-being.